In truth, this is a grudge purchase for me. I didn't want to buy the book as I'm not a fan of the genre and yet my group has elected to play it. So I bought a discounted used copy of 2e from Amazon, but it wasn't complete enough to satisfy me so I after much perusing through the intertubes I found it here at a decent price.

It's actually not a bad system, just missing guns. At least it's not D&D. Truth is, I'm enjoying the game so far. Book is put together nicely as well.

In the beginning of the book is a very short article on running monsters with their own motivations and it succeeds rather well in a fairly short amount of space. In fact, I’d say that this primer is very much the heart and soul of the work. The monsters are meant to be a little different, and most certainly meant to be generally intelligent opposition. There’s a repeat of the “how to read the monster stat blocks” section in the Monsters and Treasure book, and then the monsters!

The Castles & Crusades Classic Monsters Manual has over 200 monsters, all of them with C&C statistics. About half of the monsters come from the Tome of Horrors by Necromancer Games, which in turn contains a bunch of monsters that had only shown up previously in modules (Vegepygmies, for example). I happen to own Tome of Horrors, and so I can tell you that this book is not a reprint of it. Not every monster in Tome of Horrors is in Classic Monsters, and many (at least half) of the monsters are original creations, or at least original to this book. Of course, the utility of this book is pretty much restricted to people who use Castles and Crusades.

However, if you are like me and enjoy seeing all sorts of monsters, and mining ideas of them for yourself, you’re in for a treat. Assuming you are not interested in the creatures that have appeared previously let me illuminate some of the cooler original monsters for you. The Bendith y Mamau is a fae type creature that resides in a house to protect it from evil. They are easily insulted and wreak havoc on people and places which do insult them, often require greater offerings to appease them. That is one hell of an adventure seed right there.

Another example is the Chawl Witch, a creature that is really entertaining to a polyglot like me. They are basically language masters, able to understand and comprehend languages after only a few hours with them. They are always female, but reproduce with a male of any humanoid species. They lay eggs, and the eggs and young are coveted by wizards who want a servant/slave. Once again, an adventure seed that is not to be sneered at.

There are some really cool werecreatures in the book: werefoxes, werespiders, and werehounds. Each is given a description which includes a solid adventure seed like in the previous examples. Having devoured this book, I can say with authority that every single creature listed has an adventure seed in the description in which an entire night’s play can be thought up by a competent GM. There are some really fantastic ideas in here for using unusual creatures in unusual adventuring circumstances, as well as just some cool stuff to fight.

Classic Monsters is a compilation of some of the classic monsters of old school gaming, taken from the open content of the first Tome of Horrors and converted to the C&C system. This book greatly expands the amount of monster available from the Monsters & Treasure book, and would be a boon to anyone running a game of Castles & Crusades. The art is up to the usual high standards of a Castles and Crusades book, and the layout follows the crisp and clean standards of the other C&C books.

Unfortunately, among the weird and wacky monsters from the early days of the first edition of the Advanced Game, the one glaring absence would be the demons and devils. Yes, it would be easy enough to convert these...but they just seems to be much too noticeable in their absence, particularly in comparison to other much more thorough old school monster manuals that are on the market. Does this render Classic Monsters useless, or make it a less attractive purchase? Well, no to either of those questions. Classic Monsters is definitely much more affordable (and likely easier to find) than those other monster manuals, and there are still plenty of other monsters that are available in this book. With a couple of hundred new monsters, there is still a lot of meat for a Castle Keeper in this volume.

One of the strong points of the write-ups for these monsters is the combat section. For those less experienced Castle Keepers, or those who were not around in the hobby when many of these creatures were first published, having that brief outline of how each monster acts in combat can be very useful. There is also enough ecology information to be able to place these monsters into an adventure in a way that makes some logical sense.

Yes, this is a volume that adapts material that is already available, but sometimes not having to do the conversion work is worth the price of admission, and not everyone still has copies of the original MM2 or the Fiend Folio around to use for their Castles & Crusades games. Because of that, this book is useful and a good addition to anyone's Castles & Crusades library.

A great pick-up adventure for a night when you don't have anything prepared, or as a side trek for the party on the road, this is a great module for C&C or any old-school fantasy RPG. It's quick to read and prepare, and even includes a new monster.

Fields of Battle is an excellent rules set for mass combat. It's rules-light without sacrificing complexity or interest, just like you would expect from a Troll Lord Games product. It's based on the Castles & Crusades rules set. It's very scalable, letting you fight battles with dozens of combatants just as easily as with thousands. In my experience, combat with fields of battle is very fun, and manages to be fast without feeling like you're giving up tactical thinking. It includes quick, compelling rules for pitched battle, skirmishes, siege warfare, aerial warfare, and naval warfare. It includes cool and reasonable rules that keep your PCs in the fight without making them useless or overpowered. It also comes with three battle scenarios and a 'monster manual' of troop type stats. I'd definitely recommend purchasing this.

However, there are two flaws that keep this product from five stars. The first is that you have to be familiar with Castles & Crusades to use it. Now, don't worry – C&C is very quick to learn, and almost all the rules you'll need are in the FREE quick start guide. However, there are some important rules that are not present in the quickstart guide. What's the range category on a longbow? How long does a druid's Entangle spell last? These things aren't in the quickstart guide. You can pretty easily handwave this stuff, but its absence is obnoxious, and frankly, you shouldn't even have to delve into a second pdf to look up these answers.

The second flaw is the absence of any system to determine how fair a battle will be. This is all well and good if you want to re-enact the battle of Crécy (totally doable with this rules set), but from my perspective, this is a gross oversight. I'm a GM, and I use this system as part of my ongoing campaign. When my PCs march to war, I want to be able to throw a battle at them that will be challenging enough to make them feel heroic, and maybe even kill them if they make poor decisions, but ultimately be winnable if they act smart. Fields of Battle lacks any sort of system to help me plan that. If you want to use this at your table, you'd better have a friend who will enjoy playing a few rounds of Fields of Battle with you so you can develop a feel for difficulty levels before you break it out for your regular group.

All in all, an excellent product, and one I definitely recommend purchasing. Only a few faults keep it from being truly stellar.

Someone has to say it: this is the game that D&D should always have been. If Monte Cooke and associates want a blueprint to follow, they could do no better than look at what C&C has been doing to solve various problems of rolegaming's past.

This book isn't the rules for Castles & Crusades, nor should it be thought similar to a DM Guide. This is, instead, many pieces of advice, alternate rules, and words of experience for tba GM. And every page is of value, nothing is wasted.

The art is beautiful, and there's not nearly enough. This book is a book that you want to never end.

The third and final adventure in Dwarven Glory is ” The Winding Stair” and it is for three to five players at either third or fourth level. This is my favorite of all the adventures as it features a really awesome magic axe as the center piece of the adventure, along with the ghost of a fallen dwarven hero who will attempt to possess a player character, albeit it more or less benevolently. This dungeon crawl takes place in an underground remains of a castle. It contains fourteen rooms and offers a nice amount of diverisity. There are fourteen rooms, but there’s not a lot of combat. You’ll encounter a shadow mastiff, a succubus and some green slime, but that’s it. As well, there is no final battle per say. There is a “big bad” so to speak, but the climax can be as simple as just walking away from it. There are a lot of magic items to be found in this small adventure, but because the adventure revolves around a specific magical weapon and it takes place in the remains of a once great dwarven citadel, I’m fine with it. There are thousands of gold pieces worth of loot to be found, which due to the location make sense, but that’s a LOT of money to be throwing at fourth level characters. Overall, I really liked the adventure. The lack of monsters made everything seem more suspenseful and ominous and it helped to prove that a dungeon crawl doesn’t need to be littered with creatures to be fun or effective.

The Second Dwarven Glory Adventure is “Wyrm Well” and instead of investigating a bath house, you are investigating a Dwarven dungeon. The adventure is supposedly designed for three to five Level 2 characters, but considering the amount of combat in this adventure and the fact some of the monsters include a Ghost Naga and an 8 HD Wyrm, that’s pretty optimistic of the design team. In the adventure’s defense, the thing IS littered with healing potions, but to me that only makes it worse as some adventuring teams might not find them, either because they are killed before hand or they didn’t search hard enough. The adventure also contains a lot of magic items and the final battle has your players getting hit with a double bless spell (which it is implied that they stack, but that doesn’t seem right to me) so players will be helped, but because of all the items put in to help low level characters survive this, “Wyrm Well” feels more like a Monty Haul adventure than anything else. In this short little dungeon crawl, you’ll find over six magic weapons, several pieces of armour, some scrolls and the aforementioned collection of healing spells. I’d have preferred to see the character levels a little higher and a lot less magic items, but that’s just me. Aside from the plethora of items, the adventure is your standard dungeon crawl and it offers a nice amount of challenge for players.

The first Dwarven Glory adventure is “The Looking Stone” and it is for a party of characters whose levels are between four and six. The adventure revolves around a feliul stone, which is basically a animated boulder possessed by the spirit of an insane bloodthirsty dwarf. Much of the adventure pits your characters either against the feliul stone or investigating a long abandoned bath house. The feliul stone makes for a great opponent and due to the unusual nature of this antagonist, players will not only be caught off guard, but have to come up with some interesting tactics to defeat it. After all, how do you fight a giant spherical animated piece of rock? The bath house contains nine different locations to explore and it surprisingly has a lot of different encounters which keeps things interesting. Nine rooms may sound a bit small, but this is meant to be an adventure that can be played in one shot. My only problem with “The Looking Stone” is that there is no real resolution or setup. Characters are just thrown into the exploration of the area without any real reason why and there is no conclusion for the adventure given. This is a problem with all three adventures in Dwarven Glory which is odd, especially for a Castles & Crusades adventure as they often contain an overwhelming amount of back story and set up.

I’m a big fan of the Castles and Crusades roleplaying line. I love how the system is a nice blend of second edition AD&D, OD&D and some modern ideas. Unfortunately I haven’t been a big fan of the published adventures. As we saw in my review of The Forsaken Mountain, the content of the published adventures not only tends to be a bit dry, but player characters often come off as secondary to the NPCs in them. Still, I’ve not given up hope, and that’s why when I had the chance to pick up the Dwarven Glory collection, I did so happily. Just flipping through this collection of three adventures reminded me of the old Dungeon magazine in both tone and layout.

Each of the adventures is your basic short dungeon hack. There isn’t much of a story or even a setup for any of the adventures. As such these are definitely for gamers who prefer hack and slash or exploring to political intrigue or intense role-playing sessions. Each adventure also has the same four paragraph introduction for players, which feels a bit sloppy. Surely something could have been done here to make each adventure stand out more.

The first adventure is “The Looking Stone” and it is for a party of characters whose levels are between four and six. The adventure revolves around a feliul stone, which is basically a animated boulder possessed by the spirit of an insane bloodthirsty dwarf. Much of the adventure pits your characters either against the feliul stone or investigating a long abandoned bath house. The feliul stone makes for a great opponent and due to the unusual nature of this antagonist, players will not only be caught off guard, but have to come up with some interesting tactics to defeat it. After all, how do you fight a giant spherical animated piece of rock? The bath house contains nine different locations to explore and it surprisingly has a lot of different encounters which keeps things interesting. Nine rooms may sound a bit small, but this is meant to be an adventure that can be played in one shot. My only problem with “The Looking Stone” is that there is no real resolution or setup. Characters are just thrown into the exploration of the area without any real reason why and there is no conclusion for the adventure given. This is a problem with all three adventures in Dwarven Glory which is odd, especially for a Castles & Crusades adventure as they often contain an overwhelming amount of back story and set up.

The Second Adventure is “Wyrm Well” and instead of investigating a bath house, you are investigating a Dwarven dungeon. The adventure is supposedly designed for three to five Level 2 characters, but considering the amount of combat in this adventure and the fact some of the monsters include a Ghost Naga and an 8 HD Wyrm, that’s pretty optimistic of the design team. In the adventure’s defense, the thing IS littered with healing potions, but to me that only makes it worse as some adventuring teams might not find them, either because they are killed before hand or they didn’t search hard enough. The adventure also contains a lot of magic items and the final battle has your players getting hit with a double bless spell (which it is implied that they stack, but that doesn’t seem right to me) so players will be helped, but because of all the items put in to help low level characters survive this, “Wyrm Well” feels more like a Monty Haul adventure than anything else. In this short little dungeon crawl, you’ll find over six magic weapons, several pieces of armour, some scrolls and the aforementioned collection of healing spells. I’d have preferred to see the character levels a little higher and a lot less magic items, but that’s just me. Aside from the plethora of items, the adventure is your standard dungeon crawl and it offers a nice amount of challenge for players.

The third and final adventure in Dwarven Glory is ” The Winding Stair” and it is for three to five players at either third or fourth level. This is my favorite of all the adventures as it features a really awesome magic axe as the center piece of the adventure, along with the ghost of a fallen dwarven hero who will attempt to possess a player character, albeit it more or less benevolently. This dungeon crawl takes place in an underground remains of a castle. It contains fourteen rooms and offers a nice amount of diverisity. There are fourteen rooms, but there’s not a lot of combat. You’ll encounter a shadow mastiff, a succubus and some green slime, but that’s it. As well, there is no final battle per say. There is a “big bad” so to speak, but the climax can be as simple as just walking away from it. There are a lot of magic items to be found in this small adventure, but because the adventure revolves around a specific magical weapon and it takes place in the remains of a once great dwarven citadel, I’m fine with it. There are thousands of gold pieces worth of loot to be found, which due to the location make sense, but that’s a LOT of money to be throwing at fourth level characters. Overall, I really liked the adventure. The lack of monsters made everything seem more suspenseful and ominous and it helped to prove that a dungeon crawl doesn’t need to be littered with creatures to be fun or effective.

So overall, I’m pretty happy with the collection. Again, I’m disappointed with the lack of any real setup or conclusion for the adventures, but a good DM can do this themselves. I also find there’s a little too much magic being thrown around as loot, but this is a consistent problem with every Castles & Crusades adventure I’ve ever read through, so this is more a personal taste thing than anything else.

Unfortunately I can’t outright recommend the collection for a small reason that isn’t readily apparent when you pick it up. It’s the price tag. As mentioned in the header, Dwarven Glory costs $4.99 or $3.99 if you purchase it from Drivethrurpg.com. However if you look through the Castles & Crusades lineup on DrivethruRPG.com, you can see that older versions of these adventures can be purchased separately and for roughly a dollar each. So it’s $3.52 to purchase these adventures separately, but $3.99 to purchase them in a bundle. A bundle or collection should always be priced cheaper than buying things individually and because of this snafu, I’d recommend buying each adventure individually if money is tight. However, if you would rather have one PDF instead of three, the collection is the way to go.

So overall, the adventures in Dwarven Glory are fun short little hack and slash dungeon crawls that will entertain gamers who don’t have much time to play or are new to the Castles & Crusades system. They’re a bit dry and there’s not much in the way of story for each adventure, but they are still entertaining in their own right. For four bucks, this isn’t a bad deal – especially if you’re a longtime C&C fan.

Let me begin by saying that I am definitely an Old School Gamer having GMed AD&D since 1979! I lost my old gaming books recently in a move and was going to replace them but decided to give C&C a try first. I'm glad I did. I absolutely love what they've done with this product. They've taken most of the issues I had with 1st edition AD&D and fixed them, yet managed to retain the flavor.

This product has a couple of negative aspects, but they are minor: 1) The actual prose style is, at times, painfully over dramatic. The writer really should have checked his usage of certain words and phrases before going to press. (One does not "don themselves in the accouterments of battle." One can dress themselves in the accouterments of battle or one can don the accouterments of battle...) 2) The core classes for the system are not all included in the light version. Though I can understand this, the exclusion of the Ranger struck me as rather odd. It didn't end up spoiling my enjoyment of the product as I purchased the full set within a few days of reading the condensed version!

Vital Statistics: Shadows of The Halfling Hall is an adventure written for the Castles & Crusades RPG by Mike Stewart for characters of Level 1-3 with a challenge level of 0-1. This last part means it’s right in line with what Level 1-3 characters should be able to do. Not too hard but not too easy. I downloaded it as part of a larger C&C module bundle. It is 24 pages long, includes 5 keyed maps (although based on my reading, one may be missing from the PDF that I think may have been present on the inside cover) and 3 very interesting new monster types. The adventure is well written in clear and concise narrative format (meaning you can read it from cover to cover and get the gist of the story). While simple, it’s still an enjoyable read. Modules written in this voice are always nice to prep for because you don’t have to jump around so much for it to make sense. There are a few typos, but not as many as most TLG products. There is also one possible mathematical error where a lockbox is said to have a lock set by a 3rd level rogue, which it decrees as CL18 when I think it should be CL3, meaning there is an additional 3 added to the Challenge Base of either 12 or 18 for a total of Challenge Class 15 or 21. Other than those, the adventure reads nice and smooth.

If you’ve ever read any of the first edition AD&D modules or even the early basic D&D modules, you’ll be immediately familiar with how the adventure is laid out. It starts with a basic plot outline and then goes into nice detail on the NPCs. Their motivations and concerns are given as well as how they may react to certain actions by the PCs. It is all written with the assumption that NPCs encountered will be involved in significant roleplay scenes. There are actually quite a few NPCs. Lots of people for the group to talk to and ask questions. The storyline is a bit of a mystery that needs solving (see below for a spoiler free explanation) and so I would expect much of this adventure to be investigation. If your group isn’t into investigation, this module will still work nicely but you’ll lose a fair bit of the content that it includes, which for the price, is still a good value.

The keyed maps I mentioned are not strictly the graph paper style of old but would work fine drawn on a grid or not. They are not designed for minis but rather as a point of reference for description via both exploration or combat. They are simple enough that hand drawing them in a larger format will be quite easily accomplished. One of the beauties of C&C combat is that it doesn’t require minis or a battle mat, but will work fine with both if that’s what you choose.

Spoiler Free Story summary:

In Shadows of The Halfling Hall, the party finds themselves in the halfling canton of New Briar. One of the more prominent residents of the town, Willic Brambletoe, recently threw a party to celebrate the completion of his new home (a hobbit hole of course). However, after the party, no one was seen again. Now, it is up to the group of adventurers to find out what happened to the revelers. This will involve investigation with townspeople, family members, and even friends (and enemies) of the missing halflings. There’s a lot to learn in this little town and every inhabitant has some small piece of the story. Quite pleasingly, the author does a great job of naming the halflings according to Tolkeinian norms. Some names include Merin Fireheel, Josephus Longbottom, Gwynnd Knucklefoot, and most interestingly, Kyann Scarytoe. (Note to DM: If you don’t do something interesting with Kyann Scarytoe, you’re simply not doing this module justice)

Eventually, the party will work their way to the newly finished home of Willic Brambletoe. What they find there and what they’ve learned in their investigation will lead to some pretty interesting adventures as they start to put all the pieces together.

Start of slight spoiler….

As they investigate the scene of the “event” they’ll learn lots of interesting things about people in the village as well as how the new home was constructed. It will end in a relatively short dungeon crawl as they get to the bottom of things (pun intended). The final showdown is pretty interesting and should have low level players on the edge of their seats. Death is a risk in this adventure as it is in most old-school games.

End of slight spoiler…

Ultimately, I’d qualify this short adventure as a success on multiple levels. I think it does a good job of introducing new gamers to how the C&C ruleset treats the world, including the interactions between the residents of the world and the PCs. Secondly, I think it does a good job of offering an interesting story that is of an appropriate scale for new players and dungeon masters. One thing that I like about more classic systems and adventures is the scale. Everything feels more personal. Perhaps you’re not saving the world, or an entire nation, but instead you’re saving a village, or a friend, or someones loved one. The scale is smaller and more palpable. Shadows of The Halfling Hall does a great job of capturing this spirit. If you have a group ready to play C&C, this would be as good a place to start as any. With a small amount of work, it could also be a very good Halloween adventure. By adding a bit more strangeness and suspicion to the NPCs and a little more spider webs and fog toward the end of the adventure, it could really work great as a Halloween special.

I’m a big fan of Castle and Crusades and the way it combines aspects of the original Dungeons & Dragons, first edition AD&D and the d20 system into something that seem to highlight the best of all three games. It’s also the first real noticeable system that you can download in Kindle format, which has made me download the both the Player’s Handbook (even though I happily have the 2006 hardcover version on my RPG bookshelf at home) and the adventure Assault on Blacktooth Ridge in hopes they continue to port their entire line into my favorite method of reading. In fact, Assault on Blacktooth Ridge is the first adventure in the “A” series while The Forsaken Mountain, which we are reviewing today is “A8.” Although it is advised that you play all of the modules in order and they form a running campaign, it is possible to play The Forsaken Mountain on its own. Doing this however, will take a bit of work by the GM to make it fit into the storyline or homebrew campaign you are currently running. There are different endings for the adventure based on if you are running the full set of A adventures or not but honestly, I prefer the ending to the one shot format simply because it actually gives you an ending.

The Forsaken Mountain is designed for three to five players whose character range between levels 8-10. The adventure is a love story of sorts albeit in a very different manner than you might be expect. The love is between Coburg the Undying (a major source of evil in the Castle & Crusades A track, and something known as “The Vessel of Souls” which players will end up encountering at the climax of the adventure. I won’t spoil exactly WHAT the Vessel of Souls is, but suffice to say, it is probably not what players will expect when they first hear the name. The adventure involves a lot of travel, from horseback riding to a mystical portal so a good GM should have some optional encounters waiting in the wings to pad the adventure.

Like all Castle & Crusades adventures, this is a bit on the short side when it comes to how long the adventure takes to play but is super saturated with content for the keeper. Everything is highly detailed to the point where the adventure can nearly run itself. For example, the first encounter that sets up the adventure? You are given meticulous details about the surroundings, the enemy camp and even the sleeping patterns of the NPCs. That’s intense. For those that like to crib notes on every possible outcome, you’ll love the adventure just for that. At the same time, the adventure has its shares of typos or missing information. For example an assassin that acts as an evil priest’s bodyguard? He’s missing his hit points in his description. Whoops.

One thing that will either be a positive or negative based on how your troupe likes to play is the enormous amount of magic items in this adventure. I’ll admit, I tend to dole things out sparsely to make them feel more valuable, but I can totally understand why some people to hand out enhanced swords and armour more freely. Well, this adventure definitely caters to the latter. It’s not quite at Monty Haul levels, but there are more magic items in the first encounter than I’m using to seeing in several adventures put together.

The Forsaken Mountain is a very creative adventure, making use of some highly imaginative concepts like “The Dreaming Sea,” which reminded me of a high fantasy version of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands. Much of the adventure is set in this quasi-plane and this coupled with the fact most of the adventure is talking or detective work really made The Forsaken MountainCall of Cthulhu Keeper, I felt right at home with this and hopefully Castle & Crusades players will find it a nice change of pace.

The final encounter of the adventure pits the players against a whopping TWENTY enemies, many of which are spell casters. The adventure doesn’t give spells for this encounter however, which I found more than a bit odd, but it also means the GM can customize things to give his or her players an easier (or harder) time. Personally I found this a bit lazy especially in the face of how detailed the rest of the adventure is. As well, putting a party of level 8-10 against twenty enemies, including a level 12 Wizard, two level 9 clerics, a third cleric at level five and a 7th level Illusionist is pretty far and above what players at the suggested level will be encountering. A GM with any tactical knowledge will see that the three clerics alone will keep the enemy forces well healed. This doesn’t even take into account the sheer number of magic items every antagonist has here. This will be a really unsatisfying battle to players, especially if they find out afterwards they are not meant to come close to winning this. Yes, it’s a purposeful setup to lose so that the A tract of adventures can continue. Still, this battle plus the lack of a real resolution for the adventure (especially as a one shot ) soured me on the entire piece. Couple this with the typos and The Forsaken Mountain feels like it was a bit rushed as well as written for the writer of the adventure himself for than for people to play it.

Overall I give The Forsaken Mountain a thumbs in the middle. It’s a bit bi-polar as a lot of the adventure is high detailed while other parts needed a better editor as things are missing, erroneous or have noticeable errors regarding formatting and spelling. The majority of the adventure is thinking and talking, but then it ends with a poorly thought odd final battle where the PCs are merely a plot device in the writer’s overall story leaving things with an unsatisfactory ending across the board. If you haven’t played the previous seven adventures, it’s very hard to recommend this one while if you HAVE, you’re left hoping A9 aka “The Tower of Night” will be of a higher quality. If you’re looking for a standalone adventure for Castle and Crusades, you’re better off looking elsewhere.